The Prison Industry

The United States prison industry is massive. As of 2016, there were an estimated 2.3 million people behind bars and 5 million people on probation or parole. The estimated cost of mass incarceration is $182 billion each year.

The mapping provided below shows corporate involvement in the various aspects of the prison industry.

The private prison industry causes human misery through its operation and increases mass incarceration through its political influence. It includes hundreds of companies, many of which are very small, and relatively few publicly-traded companies. Our investment screening tool highlights and profiles the main publicly-traded companies in the industry. In addition, we hope to contribute to the larger movement to end mass incarceration by providing information on all profiteers, including the ones that are privately owned.

We endeavor to make this information as comprehensive and current as possible, and we update it regularly. However, we cannot guarantee that all of the information available in our database is up-to-date. It is, therefore, the responsibility of users of this site to verify information received as a result of their use of this tool. If you believe that there is information that is missing or that needs to be updated, please let us know.

Facility Management - U.S.

Facility Management is the traditional arrangement most people associate with prison privatization: A for-profit corporation is awarded a contract with a city, county, state, or federal government agency to manage the daily operations of a jail, prison, or detention center.Read more

International Facility Management

The most common association with prison privatization is facility management. Facility management is when a company is contracted with a governmental agency to manage the daily operations of a jail, prison, or detention center. There is private facility management is at least eleven countries.

Youth Detention and Treatment

Private juvenile detention facilities include jails and prisons (county, state, and federal) as well as alternative programs such as group homes, halfway houses, residential drug treatment, and mental hospitals.

Prison Food, Commissary and other Goods

Every item in a prison--from the food on the plastic trays to the uniforms worn by prisoners and guards--is a potential business opportunity. For the purposes of our analysis, the 'prison goods' market includes the supply of prison food services, commissary, vending, clothing, and prison furniture.Read More

Prison Phone Services

Companies providing prison telephone service enjoy a state-sponsored monopoly, since prisoners can’t choose which phone service they want to use. Once a contract is awarded, the cost of phone calls is set by the telephone companies, without any competition. In all but eight states, contracts include “commissions” paid to jails and prisons – direct payments to the contracting agencies, added on top of the price of the phone call and paid by the prisoners.Read more

Prison Video Visitation

Video visitation companies provide real-time interactive video communication services connecting family members and others with incarcerated people. Often, they charge exorbitantly high rates for remote capabilities, operate through unreliable technology, and shut down traditional in-person visitation in prisons and jails using it.Read More

Medical and Mental Health Services

While incarcerated, people need access to medical care, dental care, eye care, and behavioral and mental health services. Prisons are required by law to provide adequate health care to people in prison and, like everyone, prisoners’ medical problems ranging from the flu to AIDS, hepatitis C, and cancer.

Transportation Services

Transportation services refer to all supervised prisoner transportation at the local, state, and federal level, including court and medical visits, extradition, and transportation between jurisdictions, and deportations.

Community Corrections

“Community Corrections” refers to criminal justice supervision and services provided to individuals outside prisons and jails. It includes “alternatives to incarceration,” such as probation, electronic monitoring, home confinement, day reporting centers, intermediate sanctions facilities and programs, and court-ordered treatment programs, as well as re-entry services, including parole supervision, halfway houses, and transition programs.Read more

Private Probation

In the states and municipalities in the U.S., if a person is given a traffic ticket or other citation but cannot pay the fine immediately, they are placed on “probation.” Over 1.6 million adults were on probation for misdemeanor crimes as of January 2013. Private probation companies then supervise, drug test, and collect court ordered fines from them. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are sentenced to probation with private companies for misdemeanors every year by well over 1,000 courts across the U.S., mainly in the South.Read more

The major companies profiting from these practices are listed below. 3M Electronic Monitoring and G4S are global leaders in this industry, and about a third of the electronic monitoring market in the U.S. is controlled by Behavioral Interventions (BI Inc.), a wholly-owned subsidiary of GEO Group.Read more

Banking and Financial Services

Banks and other financial services companies are involved in mass incarceration through providing services to the private prisons companies and through providing financial services in prisons and for incarceration facilities.

Prison Labor

In prisons, jails, and detention centers across the U.S., incarcerated people are required to work for little to no pay. The legality of prison labor within the US remains entrenched in the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude “except as punishment for crime.”

Bail Bonds

The percentage of people required to pay bail for their release from jail has increased significantly from 37 percent in 1990 to 61 percent in 2015. The for-profit bail industry has also increased significantly during that time and in 2015, had profits exceeding $2 billion.